Sir Max Beerbohm

“ At thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute’s dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. But—well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself: to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the Devil, that I nodded and smiled to him. ”

“ VOICE OF A COBBLER Hear his false lips cry Peace when there is no Peace! SAV. Are not you ashamed, O Florentines, [Renewed yells, but also some symptoms of manly shame.] That hearken’d to Lorenzo and now reel Inebriate with the exuberance Of his verbosity? [The crowd makes an obvious effort to pull itself together.] A man can fool Some of the people all the time, and can Fool all the people sometimes, but he cannot Fool ALL the people ALL the time. [Loud cheers. Several cobblers clap one another on the back. Cries of ‘Death to Lorenzo!’ The meeting is now well in hand.] ”

“ Yet I found his aristocrats as convincing as Braxton’s rustics. It is true that I may have been convinced wrongly. That is a point which I could settle only by experience. I shift my ground, claiming for Maltby’s aristocrats just this: that they pleased me very much.
Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist’s sense of beauty, do not satisfy us. They may be as beautiful as all that, but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won’t believe it. ”

“ There I sat, hot-browed from sleeplessness, cold in the feet, stiff in the legs, cowed and indignant all through—sat there in the broadening daylight, and in that new evening suit of mine with the Braxtonised shirtfront and waistcoat that by day were more than ever loathsome. Literature’s Ambassador at Keeb.... I rose gingerly from my chair, and caught sight of my face, of my Braxtonised cheek, in the mirror. I heard the twittering of birds in distant trees. I saw through my window the elaborate landscape of the Duke’s grounds, all soft in the grey bloom of early morning. ”

“ No one came. I vowed I wouldn’t bleed to death for Braxton. I rang again. At last a very tall powdered footman appeared—more reproachful-looking than sympathetic, as though I hadn’t ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from going down to dinner. ”

“ I wasn’t sure,’ said Maltby, ‘whether it was ever published. A dreary affair, wasn’t it? I knew a great deal about suburban life. But—well, I suppose one can’t really understand what one doesn’t love, and one can’t make good fun without real understanding. Besides, what chance of virtue is there for a book written merely to distract the author’s mind? I had hoped to be healed by sea and sunshine and solitude. These things were useless. The labour of “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson” did help, a little. When I had finished it, I thought I might as well send it off to my publisher. ”

“ I glanced at the writing on it—some sort of gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.
‘Come, Soames! pull yourself together! This isn’t a mere matter of life and death. It’s a question of eternal torment, mind you! You don’t mean to say you’re going to wait limply here till the Devil comes to fetch you?’
‘I can’t do anything else. I’ve no choice.’
‘Come! This is “trusting and encouraging” with a vengeance! This is Diabolism run mad!’ I filled his glass with wine. ”

“ Dapper little Maltby—blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of him. ”

“ Had I known that he really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist had achieved, I might not have shunned him. No man who hasn’t lost his vanity can be held to have altogether failed. Soames’ dignity was an illusion of mine. ”

“ Soames repeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn. ‘In Life and in Art,’ he said, ‘all that matters is an INEVITABLE ending.’
‘But,’ I urged, more hopefully than I felt, ‘an ending that can be avoided ISN’T inevitable.’
‘You aren’t an artist,’ he rasped. ‘And you’re so hopelessly not an artist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and make it seem true, you’re going to make even a true thing seem as if you’d made it up. You’re a miserable bungler. And it’s like my luck.’
I protested that the miserable bungler was not I—was not going to be I—but T. K. Nupton ”

“ Courage! The horrid hounds Droop tail at sight of me and fawn away Innocuous. [The crowd does indeed seem to have fallen completely under the sway of LUC.‘s magnetism, and is evidently convinced that it had been about to make an end of the monk.] Take thou, and wear henceforth, As a sure talisman ‘gainst future perils, This little, little ring. [SAV. makes awkward gesture of refusal. Angry murmurs from the crowd. Cries of ‘Take thou the ring!’ ‘Churl!’ ‘Put it on!’ etc. Enter the Borgias’ FOOL and stands unnoticed on fringe of crowd.] ”

“ Prolonged cries of ‘Death to the Sour-Souled Savonarola!’ Several cobblers detach themselves from the crowd and rush away to read the Platonic Dialogues. Enter SAVONAROLA. The crowd, as he makes his way through it, gives up all further control of its feelings, and makes a noise for which even the best zoologists might not find a good comparison. The staves and bill-hooks wave like twigs in a storm. One would say that SAV. must have died a thousand deaths already. ”

“ But one must not condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby’s ‘Ariel’ was a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton’s ‘Faun,’ crude though it was in many ways, had yet a genuine power and beauty. This is not a mere impression remembered from early youth. It is the reasoned and seasoned judgment of middle age. Both books have been out of print for many years; but I secured a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found them well worth reading again. ”

“ Had Sav’narola spoken less than thus, Methinks me, the less Sav’narola he. As when the snow lies on yon Apennines, White as the hem of Mary Mother’s robe, And insusceptible to the sun’s rays, Being harder to the touch than temper’d steel, E’en so this great gaunt monk white-visaged Upstands to Heaven and to Heav’n devotes The scarped thoughts that crown the upper slopes Of his abrupt and AUStere nature. SACR. Aye. [Enter LUCREZIA BORGIA, ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, and LEONARDO DA VINCI. LUC. is thickly veiled.] ”

“ We had drunk black wine. I scream’d, ‘I will race you, Master!’ ‘What matter,’ he shriek’d, ‘to-night Which of us runs the faster? There is nothing to fear to-night In the foul moon’s light!’ Then I look’d him in the eyes, And I laugh’d full shrill at the lie he told And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise. It was true, what I’d time and again been told: He was old—old.
There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza—a joyous and rollicking note of comradeship. ”

“ But did you explain—for instance—that there was no such thing as bad or good grammar?’
‘N-no,’ said Soames. ‘Of course in Art there is the good and the evil. But in Life—no.’ He was rolling a cigarette. He had weak white hands, not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained by nicotine. ‘In Life there are illusions of good and evil, but’—his voice trailed away to a murmur in which the words ‘vieux jeu’ and ‘rococo’ were faintly audible. I think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that Rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. ”

“ In your theatres the dullest comedian needs only to say “The Devil!” and right away they give him “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.” Is it not so?’
I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.
‘I am a man of business,’ he said, ‘and always I would put things through “right now,” as they say in the States. You are a poet. Les affaires—you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh? What you have said just now gives me furiously to hope.’
Soames had not moved, except to light a fresh cigarette. ”

“ I had remembered Braxton at the moment of recognising Maltby.
‘Suppose HE hadn’t been asked.... But of course we both were. It happened that I was the first to be presented to the Duchess.... It was a great moment. I hoped I should keep my head. She wore a tiara. I had often seen women in tiaras, at the Opera. But I had never talked to a woman in a tiara. Tiaras were symbols to me. Eyes are just a human feature. I fixed mine on the Duchess’s. I kept my head by not looking at hers. I behaved as one human being to another. She seemed very intelligent. We got on very well. ”

“ There is much to be said for the theory that a dramatist should first vitalise his characters and then leave them unfettered; but I do feel that Brown’s misused the confidence he reposed in them. The labour of so many years has somewhat the air of being a mere improvisation. Savonarola himself, after the First Act or so, strikes me as utterly inconsistent. It may be that he is just complex, like Hamlet. He does in the Fourth Act show traces of that Prince. I suppose this is why he struck Brown as having become ‘more human.’ To me he seems merely a poorer creature. ”

“ Even so, however, I am not blind to the great merits of the play as it stands. It is well that the writer of poetic drama should be a dramatist and a poet. Here is a play that abounds in striking situations, and I have searched it vainly for one line that does not scan. What I nowhere feel is that I have not elsewhere been thrilled or lulled by the same kind of thing. I do not go so far as to say that Brown inherited his parents’ deplorable lack of imagination. ”

“ But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘can’t you understand that I’m in his power? You saw him touch me, didn’t you? There’s an end of it. I’ve no will. I’m sealed.’
I made a gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word ‘sealed.’ I began to realise that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him to eat at any rate some bread. ”

“ Savonarola will not tempted be By face of woman e’en tho’ ‘t be, tho’ ‘tis, Surpassing fair. All hope abandon therefore. I charge thee: Vade retro, Satanas. LEONARDO Sirrah, thou speakst in haste, as is the way Of monkish men. The beauty of Lucrezia Commends, not discommends, her to the eyes Of keener thinkers than I take thee for. I am an artist and an engineer, Giv’n o’er to subtile dreams of what shall be On this our planet. I foresee a day When men shall skim the earth i’ certain chairs Not drawn by horses but sped on by oil Or other matter, and shall thread the sky Birdlike. ”

“ But Braxton’s faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his class—wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing. And I find myself convinced altogether by Braxton’s rustics. I admit that I do not know much about rustics, except from novels. ”

“ Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? ”

“ I used to write a great deal about the future of the British drama, and they, for their part, used to think and talk a great deal about it. People who care about books and pictures find much to interest and please them in the present. It is only the students of the theatre who always fall back, or rather forward, on the future. Though second-nighters do come to see, they remain rather to hope and pray. I should have known anywhere, by the visionary look in his eyes, that Brown was a confirmed second-nighter. ”

“ Braxton turned in his sleep.
‘I resumed my seat, and... and... sat up staring and blinking, at a tall man with red hair. “I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Yessir,” he replied; and his toneless voice touched in me one or two springs of memory: I was at Keeb; this was the footman who looked after me. But—why wasn’t I in bed? Had I—no, surely it had been no nightmare. Surely I had SEEN Braxton on that white bed.
‘The footman was impassively putting away my smoking-suit. ”

“ I don’t say I walked forgotten: the eminent woman constantly asked my opinion; but my opinion, though of course it always coincided with hers, sounded quite worthless, somehow. I longed to shine. I could only bother about Braxton.
‘Lady Rodfitten’s voice sounded over-strong for the stillness of evening. The shadows lengthened. My spirits sank lower and lower, with the sun. I was a naturally cheerful person, but always, towards sunset, I had a vague sense of melancholy: I seemed always to have grown weaker ”

“ She said how lovely it must be to spend one’s life among clever people. She supposed I knew everybody here to-night. She asked me to tell her who everybody was. She asked who was the tall, dark man, over there. I told her it was Stephen Braxton. She said they had promised to introduce her to him. She added that he looked rather wonderful. “Oh, he is, very,” I assured her. She turned to me with a sudden appeal: “DO you think, if I took my courage in both hands and asked him, he’d care to come to Keeb?” ”

“ Dazed, I turned back, at length, into the little room; and I suppose I paid Berthe or Rose for my dinner and luncheon, and for Soames’: I hope so, for I never went to the Vingtieme again. Ever since that night I have avoided Greek Street altogether. And for years I did not set foot even in Soho Square, because on that same night it was there that I paced and loitered, long and long, with some such dull sense of hope as a man has in not straying far from the place where he has lost something.... ”